Blitz on the victory in the 1win Essence II final: “The key was Ammar’s decision to feed miCKe.”
Team Liquid coach William “Blitz” Lee spoke in an interview at 1win Essence II about the victory over Team Falcons in the tournament’s grand final.
On the team’s preparation for the Falcons, given their previous loss to that team
I didn’t do anything. The key was Ammar [ATF]’s decision to let miCKe outplay him. They had some kind of strange arrangement; he just decided to play poorly, and miCKe outsmarted him. I didn’t understand what that was all about.
It was probably influenced by the joint training sessions we held with them yesterday. A meta that was uncomfortable for us developed during those sessions, and our opponent turned out to be better prepared to adapt to it. We discussed this with the team yesterday, and in the end, we were also ready to adapt. Games against these guys are always exciting.
On the championship ahead of The International 2026
[Question: “Does this victory give you confidence heading into TI?”]
I suppose so. When you’ve been playing on a professional team for so long, especially if you make it to the finals, you give it your all. No one says they don’t care or that it was just a practice match. There’s a lot of money on the line, and there’s confidence to test out ideas. When you’re on a good team, you want the chance to see if your strategies work.
I think Dota 2 will reach a point where you need to be consistently strong, rather than catching someone off guard with an unexpected strategy. Would it be a surprise if a team picked Centaur at TI or valued certain heroes over others? Unlikely.
On My Job
I probably have the easiest job. I show up whenever I want, play terrible games at 6,000 MMR, and try to convince Nisha to pick Storm—he picked him twice today. I often share ideas with tOfu, but he says they’re bad, so then I have to look for something better. Then I just sit in practice mode until they kick me out.
Right now, I’m playing a lot of the “Dark Carnival” mini-game, where you have to type out text. We compete against each other to see who can take first place. Nisha is the weakest so far. We set aside two hours a day for this.
On the impact of the loss in the upper bracket on the Grand Final result
It did have an impact. It’s funny—at the start of the tournament, we lost to MOUZ, which probably surprised everyone. I told the team back then that it was a good loss, and I wasn’t joking. We learned a lot from it—specifically, what works and what doesn’t in our draft strategy.
If all your ideas are working well leading up to TI, that’s great, but losses are also necessary to understand where your weaknesses lie. I’d say even now we’re not a perfect team. We could have lost this series: they were ahead on the first map and could have won the third. We still have a lot of work to do, especially on the draft. There were some less-than-perfect moments, so I’ll treat this match as a loss and ask myself what we could have done better.
If you approach this with the understanding that you can get better—that’s great. If we’d won the series without a single slip-up—what could we have learned from that? Yes, our strategies work, but if we’d had to switch to Plan B, would it have worked? It’s important to understand why you win and why you lose, so yesterday’s setback was fine by me. We have a saying on the team: you either win or learn a lesson, and yesterday we learned a lot of lessons.
Team Liquid took first place at 1win Essence II after defeating Team Falcons in the grand final. The match ended with a score of 3–0, and the champions earned $100,000 out of the $200,000 total prize pool. Next, Liquid will compete at The International 2026—the tournament begins on August 13.
